Pernicious Prelude

Sly and Subtle, The Golden Compass Slithers Into Cinemas

Years ago, writing about The Last Temptation of Christ, I
mentioned that I found it significant that a film so profoundly annihilative of
Christian imagination had been directed by a lapsed Roman Catholic from a novel
by a lapsed Eastern Orthodox Christian: Only artists with personal imaginative
roots in historic Christian tradition could create something so deeply and
utterly opposed to it.

Such works could never have been made, I wrote, “by an
ordinary nonreligious or atheistic filmmaker, or even by a lapsed Protestant.”

Novelist Philip Pullman — author of His Dark Materials, of
which The Golden Compass is the first volume in a series (a trilogy, so far) —
is an atheist. But, in an interview with Orthodox film writer Peter Chattaway,
he called himself “a Church of England atheist, and for the matter of that a
1662 Book of Common Prayer atheist.”

That seems fair enough. For Pullman’s Compass Church is
dogmatic and authoritarian but not actually religious, even in a negative way.
His dislike of the very concept of spirituality prevents him from attempting to
depict it even in portraying his enemies.

Most notably, Pullman debunks a Church without Christ, the
true basis and object of Christian belief. It’s easy to caricature a ruthless,
rigid hierarchy, or to imagine an alternate history with John Calvin as pope.
It’s another matter to propose a persuasive materialist interpretation of Jesus
Christ.

In Pullman’s moral universe, Christ must either be religious
and therefore evil or else a freethinking materialist and therefore good.
(Pullman plans to take this particular bull by the horns in his next book.)

Christian writer and journalist Peter Hitchens, younger
brother of anti-God apologist Christopher Hitchens and in many ways his
ideological opposite, has called Pullman “the anti-Lewis,” suggesting a similar
ideological opposition between Pullman and Christian writer C.S. Lewis. The
opposition of Lewis and Pullman has become a familiar one. Both are
Oxford-educated authors of fantasy stories about parallel worlds featuring
magic and talking beasts. Both tell tales in which religious ideas are not so
much allegorized as imaginatively depicted.

Now, with the first volumes of both series having been
released as movie adaptations, the parallels can be extended. From a Hollywood
perspective, both Pullman and Lewis wrote stories in a genre lately popularized
by the success of The Lord of the Rings, but with unfortunate, controversial religious
entanglements. The studios saw these elements as inconveniently important to
the fan base but potentially threatening to the broad appeal needed to cash in
on big-budget film adaptations.

Consequently, the first installments in both cinematic series
have watered down the religious and moral specificity of their respective
source material, replacing them with safely generic appeals to values like
“freedom” and “family.”

That’s not to say that The Golden Compass, adapted and
directed by Chris Weitz (About a Boy), quite negates the anti-Christian and
specifically anti-Catholic impetus of its source material any more than Andrew
Adamson’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe quite negates its Christian
roots. Like the novel, The Golden Compass is still about an alternate world
dominated by an oppressive, hidebound caricature of the Church called the
Magisterium, which talks about preserving “centuries of teaching” from the
dangers of “heresy.”

Some effort has been made to soften the connection; the word
“church” is never used and the Magisterium’s trappings are for the most part
only vaguely ecclesiastical. There’s a blend of Gothic and Baroque
architecture, for example, and a suggestion rather than a real evocation of
clerical vestments.

For the most part, though, Weitz prefers to focus on the
spectacle and intricate plotting of Pullman’s tale. The result is an
interesting blend of Victorian intrigue, high fantasy, Wellsian and modern
sci-fi and other influences. Shape-changing animal alter egos, armored polar
bears, clockwork insect spies, seafaring gypsies, airborne witches and Texas
cowboys in lighter-than-air ships run through a densely scripted story in which
a fearless young orphan named Lyra Belaqua (newcomer Dakota Blue Richards)
acquires a magical, truth-divining alethiometer. Then she embarks on an epic
journey with a mysterious femme fatale named Marisa Coulter (Nicole Kidman).

On its face, it’s engaging stuff. Weitz handles it well
enough for casual viewers. But, as with Adamson’s first Narnia film, serious
fans are likely to be frustrated by the rushed, abbreviated storylines and the
diminished themes. Still, the material works well on its own terms. This is not
surprising because, of the three books, The Golden Compass is possibly the best
written and least problematic. It’s certainly the least didactic and overtly
anti-religious.

And therein lies the problem. Viewed in isolation, in terms
of what is actually on the screen, The Golden Compass is far less objectionable
than, say, Elizabeth: The Golden Age or The Da Vinci Code. But of course the
film doesn’t exist in a vacuum. To regard it in isolation is foolhardy at best.

The film is now a pivotal property in a franchise that
includes the three novels, the future films that may be made and the additional
novels that Pullman will almost certainly write. Whether more books get written
and more movies get made depends, of course, on Compass’ success.

It’s some small comfort that, although the film is
undeniably entertaining, The Golden Compass is — like The Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe before it — nowhere near as brilliant as New Line’s first big
fantasy hit, The Lord of the Rings. It probably won’t prove as enduring,
either. On the other hand, Weitz has repeatedly made it clear that, just as
Pullman’s own writing becomes increasingly explicit throughout the series, any
sequels to The Golden Compass will be correspondingly more faithful to the
religious themes of their source material.

If only the Narnia filmmakers showed similar interest and
respect for Lewis’s religious themes.

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